Thin Layer Drying of African Breadfruit (Treculia africana) Seeds: Modeling and Rehydration Capacity

Abstract

African breadfruit (ABF) seeds are underutilized plant resources, which have been reported to have high potential for novel food and industrial uses. The kinetics of moisture removal during air drying of the whole (WS) and dehulled (DS) seeds was studied at temperatures of 40–70 °C. Five empirical models were tested for predicting the experimental data. Drying of ABF seeds followed an exponential decay pattern, while drying predominantly took place during the falling rate periods. All the drying models predicted the experimental data above 90% accuracy while the Henderson–Pabis model gave the best fit (0.95 < r 2 < 0.99) at most of the experimental conditions. Effective moisture diffusivity, D eff, ranged from 3.65 to 7.15 × 10−9 m2/s and 3.95 to 6.10 × 10−9 m2/s for WS and DS, respectively. D eff showed significant dependence on the moisture content (p < 0.01). Rehydration capacity of DS was not significantly affected by drying temperature while that of WS increased with drying temperature.